Andrew – you advocate that whether we do or don't make use of voluntary assisted dying should be up to each of us to decide for ourselves (without coercion).

So it would seem that you would agree with Philip Nitschke who infamously stated, “ . . . all people qualify [to have assistance to die], not just those with the training, knowledge or resources to find out how to ‘give away’ their life. And someone needs to provide this knowledge, training or recourse necessary to anyone who wants it, including the depressed, the elderly bereaved, and the troubled teen.

. . . This would mean that the so-called ‘peaceful pill’ should be available in the supermarket so that those old enough to understand death could obtain death peacefully at the time of their choosing.”

Do you sincerely think that “the depressed, the elderly bereaved, and the troubled teen” should be helped to end their life whenever they choose? Should a "peaceful pill" be readily available for anyone who wants it?

If not then you fail to stand by your advocacy that it should be up to each of us to decide for ourselves about VAD.

Come on, spell out clearly exactly what it is you are supporting

There is a way four.

Fund research into "next life" .

Knowing with certainty what comes next after death, will ensure the paradigm of successful VAD.

Until then, what if " things are bad but they could be worse" . That question always remains relevant.

Dan

I disagree! Life is a precious gift. Instead of making doctors acquiesce to assisted suicide, need to help patients live! Today over a million folk a year are routinely told, we've done all we can make your life a living hell in the process, now go home and die.

Until then here are some scripts for some very powerful, very expensive opioids that'll make you more comfortable if all but vegetative! Albeit, less effective over time!

We could have remediated your condition in hours of your first consultation but for government and the fossil fuel industry, big nuclear, big pharma's and green activists recalcitrant intransigence!

Given all those groups are united in extreme vociferous opposition to MSR thorium/alpha particle/miracle cancer cure, bismuth 213!

Currently, around 1 in 2 of us will in our lifetime, be exposed to cancer as the patient or relative of patient!

Be forced to watch the last stages of often remediable conditions go on to claim yet another victim prematurely, sometimes very young children!

All while the ubiquitous "cancer industry' makes squillions from this for them, gravy train! From big pharma to those whose very lucrative business models raising funds for cancer research?

Were this not the case and the untold scandal, this would be the very next, asleep at the wheel, four corners expose!?

Long may it continue, even if that also means the victims in their millions annually have to suffer months of nausea, hair loss, projectile vomiting, diarrhoea, along with indescribable pain!?

DON'T NEED ASSISTED SUICIDE, JUST A GUN LICENCE/ALLOW THEM TO TOP THEMSELVES AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO MIRACLE CANCER CURE BISMUTH 213!

Be good enough to do it in the bath old chap so there's not too much mess to clean up/use the pistol, not the shotgun we want a recognisable head left on your shoulders, OK?

Let's make all of the above an election issue the very next time we vote, anywhere! Demand of your rep, their views on nuclear power, climate change/MSR thorium!
Alan B

Hi JP

These are great questions; thank you for raising these points.

The short answer is that my article is about voluntary assisted dying (VAD), not voluntary assisted suicide.

To answer you properly, I will have to do so in a series of posts because of word limits, so please bear with me.

The proposals are only to make VAD available to people who are terminally ill, defined as in the last six months of their lives or, if suffering from a neurodegenerative condition, the last 12. VAD is about helping people who are already dying have good and peaceful deaths; it is not about helping people commit suicide. Suicide applies to people who are not dying and these people cannot claim that they are merely trying to ensure that their dying is peaceful and free from unnecessary suffering. Since VAD excludes these people, the elderly, the bereaved, or the troubled teen wouldn’t be able to access VAD.

Now you might reply: why don’t my arguments about conscience commit me to the claim that the default position should be to allow voluntary assisted suicide (VAS), and not just VAD? The answer is that if we allowed VAS and not merely VAD, we are taking a much greater risk that the vulnerable people you mention would gain access when this isn’t really what they truly want in accordance with their own conscience. To take the teenager, we know that teenagers have their whole lives ahead of them and they are very likely to change their minds later, and be glad that they did not act on their suicidal thoughts. There is a real question whether their decision would be truly voluntary for this reason. Further, we know that their values and beliefs are likely to change since they are still at an early stage in their lives. As others have claimed, the terminally ill are at the end of their lives and it is much less likely that their values and beliefs will change (See Jansen, Wall and Miller, ‘Drawing the line on physician-assisted death’ Journal of Medical Ethics 2019; 45: 190-197 http://www.colegiomedico.cl/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/190.full_.pdf).

We also know that people who are bereaved will recover after approximately six months, and that their desire to commit suicide while they are bereaved is likely to be clouding their judgement. Again, we can doubt that these decisions would be truly voluntary. Someone whose judgement is clouded is not really acting voluntarily, and so in that sense is coerced. For this reason, we can doubt that they would be truly acting in accordance with their own conscience. The desire to ensure that decisions are truly voluntary, and that people really are acting on their own conscience, can justify restricting the proposals to a voluntary assisted dying regime only.

These issues come under the empirical matters mentioned in the article, and are in the province of what in a peer reviewed paper (http://www.unswlawjournal.unsw.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/McGee-et-al.pdf) I call ‘public matters’, matters in which the State has a legitimate interest. These public matters are in contrast to personal matters. The State has this interest because it will be sanctioning the use of lethal medications so that people can end their lives with them.